Well well well. What a couple of days I’ve had!

Christmas was fantastic. It was the first for 3 years that we’ve had the entire family at home – usually someone is either overseas or in hospital, so it was nice just to get the family together and share a day of feasting and drinking. The uneaten ham and turkey (70-80% of the original weight of both) is once again proving ample sandwich filler: possibly the single best thing about Christmas, and I got a number of exceptionally cool gifts, the foremost being a very, very good coffee grinder to go with my newly found café skills and slightly older espresso machine that has been crying out for decent, consistently ground coffee for a long time. Jake will call me a coffeesnob, but oh well.

Anyway then boxing day arrived, with the traditional Melbourne test. I had a seat in the AFL reserve for the first day’s play, but due to a bloody slow start by the aussies (before Symonds went it was painfully slow, and afterwards it was just plain painful) I was tempted by some girls with MCC guest passes to go and drink at the Bullring. Needless to say, that was the end of my day as far as cricket was concerned – although I would have been mere metres from the action I think I saw another 10 balls bowled. Pathetic I know – but it wasn’t my fault. I went for the CRICKET.

Anyway the morning of the 27th saw my first sleep in for weeks. Working as a guinea pig means 6am rises for a week, and then most of last week saw similar times for getting up, for differing reasons. Anyway after I did rise at 10ish yesterday, Coz rang inviting me, inviting me to go on our second sail in as many weeks. The weather was perfect – a consistent Northerly breeze at about 15 knots coupled with a very warm 35 degree day. We spent the better part of the afternoon on the bay, before retiring to more ham sandwiches for dinner at Courtney’s house. Then he managed to convince me to stay for a beer and to meet his mates that were coming over for some drinks, and I ended up staying there the night. Self restraint is one thing I’m yet to really pick up – especially if alcohol or females are concerned, and even more so when the two are mixed. What to do?

Anyway those are the reasons for my seeming absense the last couple of days. Tomorrow I’m off with Samo to the Falls Festival until the 1st, so I suppose this is as good a time as any to wish you all the best for the new year. May 2006 be as good to us all as this year was, and may the taking down and burning of Christmas decorations fill you and your families with joy during these next weeks. Those with eyes connected to live brain matter will have noticed dialagranny.com’s smashing Chrissy colours are down. I was going to replace it with an entirely new theme coupled with an upgrade to the skeleton of the site, but I got lazy – I’ll do it in the new year. For now, goodnight, and COME ON 2006!

Pete

Merry Christmas to all. Be safe, don’t drink too much ‘Christmas spirit’, and I’ll see you all on the other side.

Hope Santa brings/brought everything you wanted!

Pete

Holy shit. Mariano Puerta, the Argentinian tennis player who lost this year’s French Open final against Nadal the Spanish prince (or 3/4 pants wearing dickhead, whatever you like) has been banned from the sport for EIGHT YEARS by the International Tennis Federation for breach of anti-doping regulations. That my friends is a hell of a ban, even if due largely to the cumulative effect of another ban served less than two years ago for a different drug. (source)

While on the subject of drug tests, I found out while sneakily browsing my file in hospital that I actually failed my own drug test in November. Apparently trace amounts of both amphetamine and opiate compounds were found in my urine. (Un)Fortunately that was all just due to Cold & Flu tablets, not illicit drugs, but by looking at my arms you could swear I was really an addict…. see for yourselves!

Suspect, huh?

Pete

Channel 10 are doing a wondrous thing this summer by screening Futurama twice a week, from the very first episode of season one to whenever the ratings dry up (I suppose). In this evening’s episode, Fry bought an old 20th century ghetto blaster and at one point plays Sir Mixalot’s ‘Baby got Back’ which Leela later refers to as “classical music”. Anyway the small sample played on the show got stuck in my head, and in the ensuing madness I stumbled over what can only be described as…. weird shit.

Evangelical Christian Dan Smith has tried to reach out to the masses with a remix of Mixalot’s song, reworded to ‘Baby got Book’, referring to bibles. The man is a tetherball scholarship winning preacher from Ohio and is clearly completely mad. You want to know the worst thing though? The song is actually half decent. Check it out.

Pete

Well that’s 2 of 3 clinical trials over and done with. I still have to turn up for the next three days at 8am for a blood test, but even after considering the strict no drinking/caffiene/poppy seeds/oranges etc etc for weeks now it’s a pretty bloody easy way of making a fair amount of money.

Anyway I’ve exhausted. Coz rang me today and we ended up going sailing down at Elwood beach, with hardly a breath of wind. You must note that this constitutes exercise straight after 3 days of being couped up and waking at 7am – not a good mix for a lazy shit like me

Pete

I decided this year that as I am now 20, I should partake in the more civilised, ritualistic adulty-type things that people pass off as being ‘well mannered’. One of the many things I promised myself I’d do is to write Christmas cards. Although I’ve all but given up after writing 4 or 5, I did manage to get those few off into the post yesterday: huzzah for me! One thing I did notice is that because I decided to buy square cards and therefore square envelopes, the Post Office won’t treat them as standard Christmas cards which you can post off for 45 cents, but rather as miniature parcels, and charge an exhorbitant 90 cents! However, what was most suprising and struck me as most odd is that cards to the England, Ireland and South Africa only cost $1 each. An extra ten cents to go around the world? What a joke.

So in conclusion, my research indicates that christmas cards are clearly a conspiracy of the government’s to rid the world of trees, as well as having the secondary purpose of putting long distance posties out of jobs. Bastards!

Pete

The more astute readers will have noticed that for the last day or two ‘grannytunes’ has been out of order, with the promise of more music soon. If you care to glance over there anytime soon, you’ll see that that promise has been fulfilled, with the J Award winning Sydney band, Wolfmother filling the void with thier debut, self-titled album. This is rock like in the 70′s and 80′s, kind of reminiscent of Led Zeppelin at thier best, but with a distinctly modern and Australian touch to it. Here’s the editorial review from Amazon:

The long awaited, highly anticipated debut album by the Sydneysiders. 12 tracks of glorious rock symphony, reminding of the likes of T-Rex, The Beatles, Cream and so many more of your favourite bands. It’s like Sabbath and Zeppelin were cryogenically frozen but took a knowledge pill and were thawed in 2005. It’s like Kyuss but all slowed down and fucked up and with odd but somehow right time changes and bold as chord shifts. But it’s different. It’s no throwback or pastiche or parody, but sounds fresh and exciting, a celebration of love for the music. It’s Wolfmother a 3-piece rock’n'roll wet dream from the abyss that are going to make you peer inside your brain and howl at the moon. From Dimension’s military, thundering drums, roaring axe intro and stunning melody, to Woman’s showcase of vocalist and guitarist Andrew Stockdale’s shivery holler, right through to the chugging riffs and sludgy breakdown of Apple Tree and the freaked out psyche of The White Unicorn, the Sydney trio bring not only the noise, they also bring the nous.

So yeah. it’s a bit different, and because of that the band have become the darling of the Australian music industry in the past months. Check out in particular ‘Woman’ and ‘Mind’s Eye’ – the first two songs lifted from the album, as well as personal favourites ‘Apple Tree’ and ‘Joker and The Thief’ – both very similar in vocal and musical style to Jack White’s White Stripes.

Note to Wolfmother: As with the pleading to the Cat Empire earlier in the year, in the unlikely event that you actually see this I realise I am probably breaking copyright laws, however, I have, for security’s sake encoded the audio files at such a low bitrate that no-one in their right mind would bother stealing them, but then that’s not even an issue because it is impossible to download the files in the first place. If you’re still not happy, email me and I’ll more than happily remove the songs. Please believe me when i say I am simply a poor student bum who’s just trying to get your name out there.

Pete

Oh boy – once again Australia has hit the international media for all the wrong reasons. 10 days ago, two lifesavers patrolling on Cronulla beach – a suburb to the south of Sydney – were approached and bashed by a gang of men of reported Lebanese background. All throughout last week rumours of a backlash by white Australians circulated, largely due to text messages and word of mouth. One read:

“F***ing Aussie in the Shire get down the north Cronulla to help support Leb and wog bashing-day. Bring your mates down and let’s show them that this is our beach and they’re never welcome back. F***ing Lebs/wogs. Let’s kill the c**ts. Tell everybody, spread the word. Fire up Aussies. Sunday midday, don’t forget. Forward this to all you know and help us…”

Let me make it known that most of the texts were nowhere near as inciting of violence as that one, but regardless, as a result around 5000 ‘Aussies’ descended on Cronulla on Sunday morning for what started as a jovial, beer infused carnival type day but slowly turned nastier. By mid-afternoon pockets of violence had broken out, and those unfortunate to be the ‘wrong’ skin colour were victimised, abused and bashed. According to the media, much of this violence was instigated by neo-nazi white supremists within the group that were taking advantage of the situation, however what I saw on the news was pure, unadulterated racism from the vast majority of those present.

Within hours, members of the middle-eastern community were back on the offensive, and again last night, travelling in gangs and attacking whoever and whatever could be found. Scores of cars had windscreens smashed and about 40 people, some even elderly, were attacked indiscriminately. No doubt the violence will continue, as understanding between the two groups seems highly unlikely, and the police seem ineffectual (as usual).

All of this is despicable behaviour from both sides of this so called ‘race war’. It has been my view for years that Australia, although preaching to the world an acceptance and celebration of different faiths and colours, still has a large and noisy racist heart. Behind the smiles and suntans, it is all too easy to hear derogatory remarks about the ‘asian invasion’ and jokes about wogs and abos. It was only a matter of time before tensions boiled over into actual violence, and unless measures are taken immediately to better integrate migrant groups into the wider population in an effort to stamp out this xenophobia, violence like this will continue for decades.

That said, the issue of young, predominantly Lebanese men and street hooliganism must be addressed equally urgently. Clearly something is wrong, as Lebanese men have been in the crime spotlight far too frequently. In 2000 a spate of gang rapings led to the 2002 jailing of 14 youths, who apparently showed little remorse for the crimes committed. The victims were all white ‘Aussie whores’, and according to the convicted, deserved every little bit of humiliation they received. One 16 year old victim was repeatedly raped by up to 9 men, then driven elsewhere, raped again and hosed down with a fire hose before being dumped in an industrial estate. Although anyone with a hint of intelligence can see that these type of events – however brutal – are few and far between, and not at all indicative of the wider Lebanese populations, let alone all those with an arabic background, these events, well documented gang activity in the suburbs, and the worldwide unease towards the Muslim faith breeds paranoia and hatred towards the race and religion.

The solution lies with the government. For the short term better policing and anti-gang measures must be implemented, to ensure isolated attacks like those against the Cronulla lifeguards last week don’t recur. Although migrant integration must be re-evaluated, most of these race issues stem from first generation Australians, so perhaps tolerance and acceptance have to be preached more at school, or migrant parents be given means to ensure their Australian children grow up without these tendencies. At the end of the day, the least we can do is take heart that there are far more decent, moral and hardworking Australians in this country than there are racist, loutish idiots that cause this sort of violence rather than quell it. I suppose it’s just difficult to appreciate that when molotov cocktails are sailing through your bedroom window.

Pete

I finally caved into mounting pressure from every direction today, took the plunge and got my hair cut (although granted I didn’t get all that much off). It was about as long as it has ever been, with the front wispy bits quite easily reaching well past the tip of my nose when straightened. Although I’ve always enjoyed having long hair (especially when spending extended periods of time at the beach), it’s nice to quite literally have a load of ones shoulders occaisionally. Anyway I haven’t got a photo of myself recently, but for those who haven’t seen me for a while (or ever) to gauge how long it was, my mum has been nagging me for months to get it cut, and female friends for well over 4 or 5 weeks. Anyway here I am now, in all my pouty glory. I must admit that although beach hair is more difficult to achieve, I do like having tighter curls again as opposed to long ratty waves – although at the end of the day the true test is how the ladies approve [cue ladies].

Pete

Well that was an interesting couple of days – I made a cool $700 for watching tv and playing monopoly, and I now have the joy of being able to add ‘cabin fever’ to my slowly growing list of ailments suffered in my lifetime.

Basically for those who didn’t quite understand what I’ve been doing (or haven’t been bothered reading the two posts I tried to explain it in), I’ve decided to lend my body to science this summer, and as such have volunteered to be a participant in a medical trial investigating a new arthritis medication. I checked in to the study ward, which is nestled somewhere in the research area of the Alfred Hospital on Thursday evening along with 20 or so other blokes,, and underwent a quick drugs and alcohol test. On Friday morning we were woken at 5:30am, showered and dressed, ready for the anaesthetist at 7:00am (overkill as far as preparation is concerned if you ask me) who stuck a cannula in each of us, so as to avoid 10 or so individual needle wounds.

Then at 7:30, the science began. The study is specifically the effect that food poses on the uptake of this drug, so we had been split into four groups, of which one would eat a high fat breakfast before dosing at 8am, where the others would fast all morning. I was fortunate enough to be in the eating group, and scoffed my high fat, high carb fry up of eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast infront of AB, who was barred from even drinking water. Then 8am arrived, breakfast finished, and we were given a pill – RWJ-445380. Blood tests followed at regular intervals throughout the day, which was otherwise spent lounging around, playing pool or sleeping, and at 8pm, after the 12 hour blood sample, the cannulas were removed and we were free to bend our elbows again!

Saturday entailed even less ‘work’, if that is at all believable. A blood sample was drawn at 8am, and that was our day. Today the same thing happened – one blood test was taken at 8am, although at least today we were discharged after 8. Tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday all require us to present in the morning for another drawing of blood as outpatients, and then the whole process repeats from Saturday. Although this means that two consecutive weekends are lost to hospitalisation, the paycheque will more than silence any demons that present themselves. Isn’t life grand?

Pete